Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's this week's instalment of the Backlogbook! Once again I must apologise for the delay in getting this out, but the start of this week has been a little busier than usual, what with dental appointments and Valentine's day preparations encroaching on my writing time. Fear not though, as I've still got plenty to say about my time spent with Grandia and Rise of the Tomb Raider last week. What's more, I'll be cutting another pair of games from my immense Pile of Shame, in my ongoing effort to whittle down my backlog. If that all sounds good to you, then make yourself comfortable and pour a nice warm cup of hot chocolate. The Backlogbook starts here!

This Week's Log

Once again, I didn't get as much chance to play games as I might have liked last week. I did manage to claw back enough time to play a substantial amount of Pokémon Sun for my ongoing Nuzlocke Challenge. As always, I won't be going in-depth on that here, but anyone who's interested in my progress can catch up with my adventures in Alola by following this link. The time I spent with other games was divided pretty evenly between Backlogbook mainstay Grandia and Lara Croft's latest - Rise of the Tomb Raider. Find out how both games fared this week by reading on below.

Grandia

It was another slow week with Grandia, albeit slightly better than the previous week. I managed to put another four or five hours into it, progressing Justin's journey beyond the Tower of Doom, past the desert oasis of Zil Padon and further south towards Milda's home of Laine Village. At this point I feel like I've exhausted things to say about the game's mechanics and aesthetics, but I feel the need to say that even around forty-two hours in, I'm still not tired of that awesome battle system. The steady trickle of new skills and spells feels like a primitive rendition of the bread-crumb trail of rewards that so many non-RPG games implement experience gain to mitigate these days, and to see it done so damn well in a game that's almost twenty years old is pretty neat. It's still frustrating trying to level up my Water-elemental spells, since many of the healing spells are so damn ineffectual, but that's really just a small quibble.

I'd speculated that Grandia was going to shift back to its episodic mode of storytelling as I began disc two, and for a little while that seemed like it was going to be the case. The overarching quest for Alent and the Icarians seemingly fell by the wayside again in favour of the more insular perils of Cafu Village. Pressing on a little further though, it's becoming clear that Grandia is beginning to intertwine its main narrative much more closely with these vignettes of smaller stories. The Garlyle Forces, the big bad who we seem to have been chasing across the world for most of the game, are finally starting to show their hand and make good on their evil potential. It's really rewarding to see the main story start to come together and grow alongside its characters. Speaking of which, there's a revelation concerning Leen that hits just after visiting the Tower of Doom, and I'm desperate to see how that pans out. Her and Feena are undoubtedly my favourite characters in Grandia, so anything concerning them and their relationship as sisters has me on tenterhooks right now.

I'm still quietly optimistic that I can make it through the rest of Grandia before the end of February. That leaves me two weeks to push through what remains of Justin's adventure. It's been a very slow burn, but I'm still really excited to see where the story goes now that it seems to be approaching its final act. I just hope the payoff ends up being worth the huge time investment that Grandia has turned out to be.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

I've sunk maybe half a dozen hours into Rise of the Tomb Raider since I first popped it in my PS4 on Friday night. Since then I've played through a decent portion of the main game (my completion percentage stands at 35% at the time I'm writing this) and poked around in the first couple of missions of the Baba Yaga missions. Having come into it fresh off the back of replaying its predecessor, 2013's Tomb Raider, I feel like I've played enough to say that Rise is very much cut from the same cloth. The exploration, the puzzles, the combat, and the Metroidvania-style inventory of progress-gating gadgets and equipment have all made it into the sequel intact, and by and large everything feels smoother and improved upon. In fact, I did think about once again just linking to my original appraisal of the previous game from back in the Spring of 2013 and leaving it at that. But even from my limited time with the game thus far, I've identified some unique points to wax lyrical on below.

While the core action remains much the same as the 2013 reboot, Crystal Dynamics have made a few tweaks to the minutiae of the formula here and there. Some of these I really approve of. The optional challenge tombs, for instance - in TR2013, these were minor distractions from the main adventure which really amounted to individual puzzles, many of which didn't require huge amounts of ingenuity to solve. Rise addresses this by making its challenge tombs much bigger, by making the puzzles more involved and multi-layered, and by giving them unique stories told through hidden documents scattered throughout them. So far I've encountered about four or five of these tombs, and every single one has been a joy to explore and figure out.

Changes that I'm less keen on involve the game's upgrade system. In TR2013 upgrades were bought with a single catch-all "currency" called salvage. It was a simple system that ensured the player was never far away from the next inventory improvement. Instead of this, Rise disperses its upgrade currency into a multitude of different categories - feathers, wood, cloth, ore, animal pelts and several other materials join salvage, and each has its own role to play in crafting and upgrading. In some scenarios I really like this, especially the way it plays into crafting arrows, healing items or makeshift grenades on the fly. Where I'm not quite as sold on it is how it ties into the inventory upgrades. Each upgrade now requires a couple of different materials to craft, needlessly muddying the previous game's comparatively clear process. Factor in the limits imposed on Lara which mean she can only carry so many of each kind of material, and the upgrade system starts to become something I'm not especially keen to engage with.

Based on my current completion percentage, I imagine it'll take me a couple more weekends to push through the rest of Rise of the Tomb Raider. At this point I'm still undecided about going for the coveted 100% completion that I sought out in its predecessor, partly because I know that doing so is going to slow me down, and partly because there seems to be a lot more stuff to do in Rise than there was in TR2013. At the very least I'll check out the rest of the Baba Yaga DLC that comes bundled with the 20th Anniversary edition on PS4, and maybe I'll dip my toes into the Endurance mode just to see how that plays. Right now though, the bottom line is that this is definitely more Tomb Raider, and that's definitely alright with me.

The Lost Pages

And so we move on from the games that are worthy of my time to those that I just can't spare any time for. The Lost Pages is the place where I part ways with games that I've acquired, but will most likely never play. The aim is to pick two games each week, make my peace with them and remove them from my backlog, with the long-term goal of reducing my backlog to below two hundred titles by the end of 2017. This week

Saints Row: Gat out of Hell

I liked the original Saints Row. I really liked the improved sequel when I played it a few years later. By all accounts, I'll probably really enjoy the acclaimed third game in the series when I eventually get around to playing it. But for all the enjoyment the series has given me over the years, I'm not so deeply invested in its unique brand of crazy that I feel compelled to play what amounts to an expansion pack for its less well-received fourth iteration. I picked up Gat out of Hell for the PS4 purely because it was free with PlayStation Plus a few months ago, and I figured it would be a nice shorter distraction once I'd gotten through the third and fourth games in the series. But speaking practically, my time would be better spent on games I really want to play than on distraction titles like this. If I end up really, really liking Saints Row: The Third and Saints Row IV and find myself hankering for more of the same, then I can always reinstate Gat out of Hell to the list. But for now, I'm happy to leave it deep in the bowels of the underworld. Sorry Johnny.

Terraria

I never "got" Minecraft. I see its appeal, I understand why people enjoy it, but I guess it's just not for me. The way I learned that it's not for me was by dabbling with Terraria, the 2D Minecraft-like that took Steam by storm when it launched a few years back. Not being in possession of a competent PC at the time, Terraria's more modest requirements ensured it won out over its three-dimensional inspiration. Since then I've tried to get into it a couple of times, but I just can't find any enjoyment in the flow of its gameplay. Gathering materials and using them to craft new objects is fine when it's auxiliary to the core game experience, but when it becomes the main focus of the game itself, that's when you lose me. The whole thing just feels so aimless and unfocused. I get that's kind of the point, that the player is supposed to make their own fun with the tools given to them. That kind of experience just isn't for me, and I'm okay with that. That's why I'm happy to bury Terraria and forget about it.

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That's a wrap, everyone. As always, thanks very much for reading. This coming week is looking like it's going to be a bit light on opportunities for video games, particularly with a friend's birthday celebrations taking up a big chunk of the weekend, but I'm optimistic about making some more headway in all three of my current "on-the-go" titles. That means that next week you can expect some more musings on Grandia, further analysis of Rise of the Tomb Raider, and additional pruning of my Pile of Shame. Thanks very much for reading folks. Until next week, take care and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Grandia (PS1C)